Page:Plutarch's Lives (Clough, v.4, 1865).djvu/463

 AGIS. 45G men who were foreign to the manners and customs of the country, not in any case from an ill-will to their per- sons, but lest the example of their lives and conduct should infect the city with the love of riches, and of del- icate and luxurious habits. For it is well known that he himself gladly kept Terpander, Thales, and Phere- cydes, though they were strangers, because he perceived they were in their poems and in their philosophy of the same mind with him. And you that are wont to praise Ecprepes, who, being ephor, cut with his hatchet two of the nine strings from the instrument of Phrynis, the musician, and to commend those wdio afterwards imi- tated him, in cutting the strings of Timotheus's harp, with what face can you blame us, for designing to cut off super- fluity and luxury and display from the commonwealth ? Do you think those men were so concerned only about a lute-string, or intended any thing else than to check in music that same excess and extravagance which rule in our present lives and manners, and have disturbed and destroyed all the harmony and order of our city?" From this time forward, as the common people followed Agis, so the rich men adhered to Leonidas. They be- sought him not to forsake their cause ; and w 7 ith persua- sions and entreaties so far prevailed with the council of Elders, whose power consisted in preparing all laws before they were proposed to the people, that the designed Ehe- tra was rejected, though but by only one vote. Where- upon Lysander, who was still ephor, resolving to be re- venged on Leonidas, drew up an information against him, grounded on two old laws : the one forbids any of the blood of Hercules to raise up children by a foreign woman, and the other makes it capital for a Lacedaemo- nian to leave his country to settle among foreigners. Whilst he set others on to manage this accusation, he with bis colleagues went to observe the sign, which was a custom